Ray Hicks passed away Easter Sunday, April 20, 2003,
at age 80. See
Appalshop's
In Memoriam page with obituary, photos and audio and video links. For information on the Ray and Rosa Hicks fund (established to assist
the Hicks family during Ray's illness), as well as past and upcoming Jack
Tales Festivals held in their honor in NC, see the page
The
Latest Tale by Dianne Hackworth in
Dianne's
Storytelling Site.

Hicks, Orville.
Carryin On: Jack Tales for Children of All Ages. 1 Audio cassette.
Whitesburg, KY: June Appal Recordings, 1990. Includes "Born and Raised"
(1:05) --"
Jack and the Three Sillies" (9:20) -- "Wicked John" (7:23) -- "Present Need, Hereafter, and
By and By" (11:51) -- "Jack and the Heifer's Hide" (11:52) -- "The Man in
the Moon" (3:37) -- "Fill Bowl, Fill" (7:18). Background folk
music performed by Don Mussell, fiddle; D.G. White, banjo and guitar; Morgan
Sexton, banjo. Recorded at Appalshop--Feb. 6/7 1990. "Fill, Bowl, Fill" is transcribed in McCarthy, William Bernard, ed. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2007. pp. 352-56, with notes on the teller and variants of this tale. McCarthy discusses Richard Chase's influence on this version, after Chase learned it from a Hicks relative, Marshall Ward. In chapter 13 on The Hicks-Harmon Beech Mountain Tradition, one of two chapters in this book focusing on tales from the Southern mountains. See tales listed at Folktale Collections Indexed in AppLit.

See
"Appalachian
Faculty Work with Noted Local Storyteller." Appalachian State University
News, 31 Aug. 2004, on English professors working with Hicks to revise this CD,
adding material on Ray Hicks, including "The Ballad of Ray Hicks," which Orville
wrote for Ray's funeral.

"Jack
and the Doctor's Girl." The Jack Tales Festival. 2002. Also
includes "Big Jack & Little Jack" by Connie Regan-Blake, "Jack's
First House" by David Joe Miller, Jack
& the Frogs by Dianne Hackworth, and
Mutsmag
by Charlotte Ross. Videotape from the 4th annual festival to benefit the Ray
and Rosa Hicks fund, August 17, 2002, at Bolick Pottery and Traditions Pottery,
near Blowing Rock, NC. For more information, see page
The
Latest Tale.
. . . by Dianne Hackworth in
Dianne's
Storytelling Site, or call 336-877-4110.

A Film About
Ray Hicks, Beech Mountain, NC. 16mm Film (19 min.). Produced by Dr. Thomas
G. Burton and Jack Schrader. Johnson City, Tenn: East Tenn. State Univ., 1974.
"Portrays a mountain man, Ray Hicks of Beech Mountain, North Carolina,
his close ties to the land, and his heritage. Shows Hicks and his family gathering
herbs, reaping buckwheat, and living a century-old way of life, while at the
same time, modern influences begin to affect his children" (WorldCat).
Opening narration by Ralph Crass.

Digital
Library of Appalachia. Appalachian
College Association. A collection of digital reproductions of print, visual,
audio and video items from archives in colleges affiliated with ACA. Includes
audio of storytellers such as Ray Hicks and Loyal Jones telling Jack Tales,
and tales collected in 1949 and published by Leonard Roberts.

Hicks, Ray. Jack
Alive! 1 Audio Cassette. Also Compact Disc (56 minutes). Whitesburg, KY: June
Appal Recordings, 1989. "Presents Ray Hicks recorded live from his home
on Beech Mountain in North Carolina telling his personal stories, jokes, anecdotes,
and philosophical insights woven together in a unique conversational skein.
Includes a portrait of rural life of special interest to literary scholars,
linguists, oral historians, folklorists, and social scientists" (WorldCat).
Contents: The Witch on Stone Mountain (26:17) -- The
Hen Cackle (harmonica, 1:20) -- The Sign was in the Knees (4:53) -- The
Vision of the Automobile Engine (5:16) --
Short
Life in Trouble (song, 1:31) -- The Mountain Fortuneteller, Callie Brown
(10:46) --
Meeting
the Devil (5:00). Program notes (16 pp., ill.) included in container. Recorded
on Beech Mountain, N.C. between July 1987 and Jan. 1989. Links on titles here
are to audio clips on Appalshop's Ray Hicks memorial page. "Meeting the
Devil" is personal testimony about being spoken to by the devil and the
Lord.

Hicks, Ray. The
Jack Tales. Illus. Owen Smith. New York: Calloway, 2000. Picture book
(see below) is sold with CD of Hicks telling "Jack and the North-West Wind," "Jack and the Bean Tree," and "Jack and the Robbers." Book includes glossary of
mountain terms and background on Ray Hicks as North Carolina storyteller, a
master of the native oral tradition. Hicks' oral tellings are not identical
to the written text in every detail, inviting interesting comparison of oral
and written versions of the same tale.

Hicks, Ray and Luke
Borrow. Cat and Mouse. Vidocassette (30 minutes). Appalachian Storyteller
Ray Hicks Series. Part 2. Derry, NH: Chip Taylor Communications, 1997. DVD
2003. Produced
by Luke Barrow, Fandangle Films. "Here Jack has to do all he can to help
a young girl overcome the magic spell a wicked witch placed on her by turning
her into a cat" (WorldCat). Based on Richard Chase's The Jack Tales.
See
Appalachian Storyteller Series above to purchase from Chip Taylor
Communications.

Hicks, Ray and Luke
Borrow. Music. Vidocassette (20 minutes).
Appalachian Storyteller Ray
Hicks Series. Part 5. Derry, NH: Chip Taylor Communications, 1997. Produced
by Luke Barrow, Fandangle Films. "Some people call it mountain music, others
describe it as hillbilly music. No matter what name it goes by, true Blue Ridge
Mountain music is hearing Ray Hicks when he sings (with and without his harmonica)
legendary American folk songs, such as Casey Jones, John Henry and Reuben Train" (WorldCat).

Hicks, Ray and Luke
Borrow. My Life I've Traveled the Mountains. Vidocassette (28 minutes).
Derry, NH: Chip Taylor Communications, 1997. "A biography of the famed
storyteller, including scenes of where and how he lives, and a performance at
the National Storytelling Festival" (WorldCat). See
Appalachian Storyteller Series above to purchase from Chip Taylor
Communications.

Mountain Talk. Dir. Neal Hutcheson. Executive Producers Walt Wolfram
and James W. Clark. Narrated by
Gary Carden. North
Carolina Language and Life Project and NC State Humanities Extension
Publications, 2003. Contains hundreds of interviews on language and life of
Appalachia, including storytellers such as
Orville Hicks.

Ray & Rosa
Hicks: The Last of the Old-Time Storytellers. Videocassette & DVD (56 min.).
Produced by Charles & Jane Hadley, Queens College, Charlotte, NC, 2000.
Narrator, Ed Grady; Writer, Jim Kelton; Editor, Austin Walker. "Presents
one year in the lives of Ray Hicks, the patriarch of American storytellers,
and his wife, Rosa. Ray Hicks is renowned for telling Jack Tales, episodic narratives
that were brought to America by immigrants from the British Isles" (WorldCat).
This link at Queens College Dept.
of English goes to photos from the filming (link not functioning 4/12/09). Storytellers such as Jay O'Callahan, Connie Regan-Blake, Willa Brigham, and Kathy Coleman, and scholars such as Glenn Hinson, William E. Lightfoot, and Rex Ellis discuss storytelling and the Hicks' family history, lifestyle, folklore, and many hardships they overcame. Hinson discusses storytelling as performance vs. storytelling for one's family and friends, making everyday life sparkle like the artistry of Rosa's cooking. The video says their life is more interesting than a Jack tale. "Ray projects the hardships of his own life into his tales about Jack"—for example, memories of his mother crying because they had no food. He talks about his mother instilling will power, perseverance and resourcefulness into him. He is a good talker, not just a storyteller. He is sophisticated because he is at home in his own culture and is always himself. He is moved and amused by the Jack tales because he knows they are real. He grew up in the woods and learned about nature from his "Indian background" (he had a Cherokee great-grandmother). He and Rosa explain names and uses of plants. Lightfoot discusses the Harmons from Germany and the Hickses from England. The Harmons most likely knew similar German tales like the ones brought from England. Ray's cousin Frank Proffitt, Jr. is mentioned. A fortuneteller predicted Ray's marriage to Rosa and the beginning of his public storytelling in his 40s. He began at an elementary school in the 1960s, then appeared at the first National Storytelling Festival in 1972. Regan-Blake describes how his stiffness melted his first time behind a Jonesborough microphone as soon as he began talking, and he became Jack. The interest of outsiders in Appalachia brought resources that allowed people to pay their property taxes. The Hicks family's annual trip to the Jonesborough festival is depicted, including their selling of objects they made, such as a dancing doll, and Ray and Rosa together on stage. At an Old Christmas service in a Presbyterian church, Ray tells about childhood experiences in hard times that he can still feel. Nearby high school students visit them on their 50th anniversary. Songs in the video are listed at the end.

Regan-Blake, Connie. "Ray's Amazing Grace." 9:40 mins. In
Dive-Into Stories: A Telling Performance. Audio CD. Asheville, NC:
Storywindow Productions, 2006. Regan-Blake tells of her close friendship
with the Hicks family after she met Ray at the first National Storytelling
Festival in 1973. She emphasizes his nonstop talking and storytelling whenever
she visited his home. She also tells of his final illness and the "amazing
grace" of his miraculous ability to fix machines in times of urgent need. Alan
Weinstein of the Kandkinsky Trio plays solo cello during this selection. This CD
also includes "The Foolish Bet," a fishing tall tale, and several heart-warming
stories.

Tall Tales of
the Blue Ridge Mountains: Stories From the Heart of Appalachia. Ray Hicks, Donald
Davis, Sparky Rucker. Dir. Phillip Williams. Videocassette. Asheville,
NC: Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 1992. c. 42 min. Music by
Sparky and Rhonda
Rucker. Jean Haskell Speer of E. Tenn. State Univ. introduces Appalachian
storytelling and the three NC storytellers. She calls Hicks a "repository
of ancient tales, local lore, and distinctive mountain speech." Hicks was
filmed at his mountain home with his wife and others around the kitchen table,
telling two first-person tall tales. First is a hunting story in which he jokes
about the prey making the mistake of landing on his shoulder. The second is
about gathering apples during the long walks of his youth. He claims the apple
tree acted as if it was trying to get its apples back, like a dying person who
doesn't want others to get his property.

"Appalachian
Faculty Work with Noted Local Storyteller." Appalachian State University
News, 31 Aug. 2004. Discusses English professors working with Orville Hicks to
revise his CD, Mule Egg Seller and Appalachian Storyteller, adding material on Ray Hicks, including "The Ballad of Ray Hicks," which Orville
wrote for Ray's funeral.

Best-Loved Stories
Told at the National Storytelling Festival. Jonesborough, TN: National
Storytelling Press and Little Rock, AK: August House, 1991. 223 pp. Has 37 tales,
including "The Day the Cow Ate my Britches" by Ray Hicks.

Brown-Hudson Folklore Awards. Information on the awards established
1970 by the NC Folklore Society, with list of recipients, including Ray Hicks,
1985, and Orville Hicks, 1997.

Childers, Brent.
"Mountain Tales Spellbind Burke." Hickory Daily Record 26 Feb. 1985. (no
page no.) With photos by Margaret Moore of Stanley Hicks spinning "his yarns
"while children hand spellbound on every word at WPCC." Article describes
Stanley Hicks's performance of tale, songs, dance and instrumental music at age
73, before a large crowd at Western Piedmont Community College on Monday.
Mentions Richard Chase visiting Beech Mt. in early 1940s after listening to R.
M. Ward. Stanley telling for audiences around the country since 1973, says he's
getting too old to do much but needs the money and loves the people. Visting
artist Frank Proffitt, nephew, played the dulcimer. He tells of scaring a lady
with "The Big Toe." although she said she wouldn't scare. Smithsonian searching
the tellers and honoring them. In Oxford collection.

Deparle, Jason. "Mountain
Voices Share Ageless, Magic Tales." The New York Times 22 June, 1982.
See The New York Times Archives online (or perhaps Lexis-Nexus) if you
have trouble with this link. Profile of Ray Hicks, including
description of Hicks telling a long story about courting his wife and Hicks
telling "Fill, Bowl, Fill." Quotes Bill Lightfoot, Appalachian State Univ.
folklorist, and Bess Lomax Hawes, a folklorist retired from the National Endowment for
the Arts. The article stresses that
Hicks saw the stories as full of love, not excessive deception, and that they
should be told for joy and wisdom, to help with living, not for money. One of
the article's statements about the Grimm Brothers collecting Jack tales in 1812
seems a little misleading, although many Appalachian Jack tales have antecedents
and parallels in German folktales.

Digital Library of Appalachia.
Appalachian College Association. A collection of digital reproductions of print,
visual, audio and video items from archives in colleges affiliated with ACA.
Includes audio of storytellers such as Ray Hicks and Loyal Jones telling Jack
Tales, audio versions of tales collected in 1949 and published by Leonard
Roberts.

Do You Speak American? Episode 2. Transcript of PBS series, with linguist
Walt Wolfram, includes clip with Ray Hicks and his wife from earlier PBS series
The Story of English. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, 2005.

Ebel,
Julia Taylor. Orville Hicks: Mountain Stories, Mountain Roots.
Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2006. "A biography for ages 8 to adult," based
on extensive conversations with members of the Hicks family. Short chapters on
different topics in Orville's life and career, with many photographs, a map of
Beech Mountain, and a linoleum print by Gail E. Haley of "Jack and his Maw."
Includes text of "My Old Mountain Home," a poem about his childhood and the
making of this book (p. v), and "The Ballad of Ray Hicks" by Orville (June 23,
2001, pp. 100-101). Discusses tales told by Orville's mother Sarah Hicks and
material on Ray and Rosa Hicks. Also includes a short tale about his uncle's
very foolish treatment of their horses. See page on this
book and study guide in Julia
Taylor Ebel's web site.

Harvey, Todd. "Jack
Tales and Their Tellers in the Archive of Folk Culture." Folklife Center
News (Library of Congress) 25, No. 4 (Fall 2003): 7-10. Other articles in
this newsletter refer to Appalachian storytelling also. The print and pdf.
versions of this newsletter contain photos of Ray Hicks at the National
Storytelling Festival and at his home.

Hicks, Orville. "Fill, Bowl, Fill" (from recording Carryin' On, see above) is transcribed in McCarthy, William Bernard, ed. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2007. pp. 352-56, with notes on the teller and variants of this tale. McCarthy discusses Richard Chase's influence on this version, after Chase learned it from a Hicks relative, Marshall Ward. In chapter 13 on The Hicks-Harmon Beech Mountain Tradition, one of two chapters in this book focusing on tales from the Southern mountains. See tales listed at Folktale Collections Indexed in AppLit.

Hicks, Orville, and Julia Taylor Ebel. Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns, As Told By Orville Hicks. Illus. Sherry Jenkins Jensen. Boone, NC: Parkway Publishers, 2009. Afterword by Thomas McGowan. 189 pp. More than twenty tales transcribed by Ebel during her extensive association with Hicks, as well as tributes and biographical material on the popular Beech Mountain storyteller. Includes photographs and many pencil drawings by Jensen. Texts of folk songs and riddles also appear, as well as stories written by Hicks that had not been told publicly, including one in his own handwriting. Some of the tales are about people and folkways in his own family history. Hicks discusses Jack and inserts comments on his favorites and his family's responses to different tales. Contains a glossary with notes on Orville's words and grammar, a study guide section with discussion questions and activities, and bibliographic material. See illustration and background at Ebel's web site. See description related to the 2009 Aesop Accolade awarded to this book by the American Folklore Society. See also AppLit's list of Folktale Collections Indexed in AppLit.

Hicks, Ray. "The
Day the Cow Ate my Britches." Best-Loved Stories Told at the
National Storytelling Festival. Jonesborough, TN: National Storytelling
Press and Little Rock: August House, 1991.

Hicks, Ray. Jack and Old Fire
Dragon. In McCarthy, William Bernard, ed. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. pp. 346-52, with notes on the teller and tale types. From a 1985 recording in the Thomas G. Burton Collection at East Tennessee State University. In chapter 13 on The Hicks-Harmon Beech Mountain Tradition, one of two chapters in this book focusing on tales from the Southern mountains. McCarthy notes that the plot with an underground journey and three princesses is common in both English-speaking American and Hispanic traditions. The book demonstrates that American folktales, from Revolutionary times to the present, should not be viewed as watered-down versions of tales from older cultures. See tales listed at Folktale Collections Indexed in AppLit.

Hicks, Ray. "Jack
and the Three Steers" (1963) and "Whickity Whack" (composite of tellings from 1973 and 1974).
In McGowan, Thomas, ed. "Four Beech Mountain Jack Tales." North
Carolina Folklore Journal 49.2 (Fall/Winter 2002): 69-115. Reprinted in
honor of Thomas McGowan from vol. 26.2 (1978). Also includes Marshall Ward's
"Jack and the Heifer Hide," with a long introduction by
Ward about his family's storytelling traditions (both collected 1977) and "Cat 'n Mouse" (1944). McGowan gives notes on parallel versions
and sources.

Hicks, Ray. "Jack
and the Three Steers" More Best-Loved Stories Told
at the National Storytelling Festival. Jonesborough, TN: National Storytelling
Press, 1992. Contents of the book listed at
Story-Lovers web site.

Hicks, Ray. The
Jack Tales. As told to Lynn Salsi. Illus. Owen Smith. New York: Calloway, 2000. Picture
book is sold with CD of Hicks telling "Jack and the North-West Wind," "Jack and the Bean Tree," and "Jack and the Robbers." Book includes glossary of
mountain terms and background on Ray Hicks, a master of the native oral tradition.
Hicks' oral tellings are not identical to the written text in every detail,
inviting interesting comparison of oral and written versions of the same tale.
Both full-page color illustrations and smaller black and white drawings are
somewhat reminiscent of the style of Thomas Hart Benton. Available as a
printable, digital e-book, 2003. See also page
on this book by a Louisiana State University Librarian (link
not available 11/5/05).

Hicks, Ronda L, and Thomas G. Burton. Beech Mountain Man: The Memoirs of Ronda Lee Hicks. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009. Story of the often violent life and storytelling talents of one member of the Hicks family, a cousin of Ray and Orville Hicks.

Higgs, Robert J.,
Ambrose N. Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller, eds. Appalachia Inside Out:
A Sequel to Voices from the Hills. 2 vols. Knoxville: U
of TN Pr, 1995. Essays, stories, and poems on all aspects of Appalachian
studies, including folklore, humor, and education. Vol. 2 chap. 4, Dialect and
Language, contains two essays on storyteller Ray Hicks and a copy of "Whickety
Whack: Death in a Sack" as told by Hicks.

Isbell, Robert.
Ray Hicks: Master Storyteller of the Blue Ridge. Foreword by Wilma
Dykeman. Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 2001. Originally published: The
Last Chivaree: The Hicks family of Beech Mountain, 1996. Includes
the text of "Jack and the North-West Wind" and
"Jack and the Three Sillies" by Ray, "The Good
Man and the Bad Man" by Orville, a family tree and bibliography. 175 pp.
Reviewed by Bill Ellis in
Appalachian Journal, vol. 24 (Winter 1997).

Jack and Grandfather Tales, page with photo and blurb on Orville
Hicks.
Old Handed Down Tales has picture of Ray Hicks with information
on Chase and Jack Tales. Web pages of Appalachian Cultural Museum, Appalachian
State Univ., 2001.
In the museum is "a video of Ray and Stanley Hicks, award-winning
story-tellers from Banner Elk, talking about story-telling in general, and Jack
Tales in particular."

Jerry Harmon: "Smoky
Mountain Rambler." Web site of a
son of Benjamin Harmon and great-great grandson of Council Harmon, who brought
the Jack Tales from England in the early nineteenth century. Includes
information on his influences, songs, stories, and performances; reviews;
photos; and audio files of a couple songs and two tales: "Jack
and the Kings' Daughters" and "Jack
in the Giants' New Ground." (At right, Jerry Harmon at Ferrum College
Folklife Festival, Oct. 2007, photo by Lana A. Whited)

Kelley, Saundra G., ed. Southern Appalachian Storytellers: Interviews with Sixteen Keepers of the Oral Tradition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. "To be from Appalachia—to be at home there and to love it passionately—informs the narratives of each of the sixteen storytellers featured in this work. Their stories are rich in the lore of the past, influenced by family, especially grandparents, and the ancient mountains they saw every day of their lives as they were growing up." Rosa Hicks and Ted Hicks are two of the storytellers.

Kelsey, Paul.
The Jack Tales. Web page by a Reference Librarian,
Louisiana State University, with background on Ray Hicks's 2001 picture book
and some suggestions for teachers.

Kinkead, Gwen. "An
Overgrown Jack." The New Yorker. 18 July 1988: 33-41. A profile of
Ray Hicks. (Only abstract available in the magazine's online archive in May
2008.)

Lindahl, Carl, ed.
American Folktales: From the Collections of the Library of Congress. Vol.1 Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004. Includes Jack tales, magic tales,
legends, jokes, tall tales, "stories for children," and personal narratives
transcribed from recordings. The tales by Ray Hicks are "Jack and the Robbers," "The
Unicorn and the Wild Boar," "The Witch Woman on the Stone Mountain on the
Tennessee Side," "Grinding at the Mill," and "Mule Eggs." Other storytellers,
some related to the Hicks family, include Samuel Harmon, Maud Long, Jane
Muncy Fugate, Aunt Molly Jackson, and others. See Table of Contents at this link
to publisher's page.

McDermitt, Barbara
Rice Damron. A Comparison of a Scottish and American Storyteller and their
Märchen Repertoires. Ph. D. Dissertation. School of Scottish Studies, Univ.
of Edinburgh, 1986. 523 pp. 14 plates.

McGowan, Thomas.
"'But, Lady, I'm Originally From Florida': Storyteller Orville Hicks and
the Performance of Appalachian Masculinity."
Program of the Appalachian Studies Association 2001 Conference,
panel on Manhood and Appalachian Masculinity in Appalachia's Poetry and Verbal
Art. April 1, 2001.

Oxford, Cheryl
Collection 1981-88. Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Inventory gives background on Oxford and "materials that Cheryl Oxford collected and
produced in conjunction with her Ph.D. dissertation, 'They Call Him Lucky Jack:
3 Performance-Centered Case Studies of Storytelling in Watauga County, N.C.' The
focus of this research was the stories and performance paradigms of three
traditional Appalachian Jack tale storytellers from North Carolina: Ray Hicks,
Stanley Hicks, and Marshall Ward. Other regional tellers of Jack tales, both
traditional and revival, including ... Richard Chase, ... were also documented
as part of her research. The bulk of the materials are audio and video
recordings of public performances and interviews, which include storytelling.
Also included are story transcripts, published articles by Cheryl Oxford, and a
copy of her dissertation." "Old
Fire Dragaman" and other tales are old by Stanley Hicks, 1985, on field
tapes.

Peters, John. Review
of The Jack Tales by Ray Hicks and Lynn Salsi. Booklist, vol.
97 (Nov 15, 2000): p. 638. This short review calls the book "a rare link
between the modern storytelling movement and an older tradition." Full
text available online if your library subscribes to Academic Index ASAP.

Petro, Pamela. Sitting Up with
the Dead: A Storied Journey Through the American South. New York: Arcade,
2001. Petro, a Massachusetts author, describes her four trips through the South
and visits with storytellers, recording conversations and tales from each one.
Appalachian storytellers discussed include Orville Hicks telling "Jack and the Varmints," Ray Hicks, and David Holt.

Salsi, Lynn. The Life and Times of Ray Hicks: Keeper of the Jack Tales.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. This biography is based on Salsi's extensive interviews and visits with Ray Hicks and his family late in his life. Includes photographs by Salsi and some older family photos. The introduction explains why Salsi chose to compile her interviews with Ray into a first-person narrative that retains many features of his dialect. One of many topics discussed involves tensions between the church's disapproval of secular storytelling at different phases of family history and the earthy tales the Hicks men loved to tell. Ray describes songs, hymns, riddles and stories that were always part of his everyday life, as well as the family's struggles with subsistence farming and other jobs. He tells abut his affinity for his grandfather's tales from the age of four and his identification with the folk hero Jack.

Salsi, Lynn. "Ray
Hicks–Voice of Appalachia." Capturing the Spirit of the Carolinas Summer 2001. Essay in online archives of "a quarterly lifestyle magazine,"
on Hicks with photo of him in his living room and cover of Jack Tales book
by Hicks and Salsi.

Sobol, Joseph. "'Whistlin’
Towards the Devil’s House': Poetic Transformations and Natural Metaphysics in an
Appalachian Folktale Performance."
Oral Tradition, vol. 21, no. 1 (2006). Downloadable at
Oral
Tradition web site. Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. Columbia,
MO. With audio recordings made at Ray Hicks's home in 1985. "This study centers
on a performance of one of Hicks’s signature tales, 'Wicked John and the
Devil.'" Discussing the relationship between Richard Chase's research and books
and the Hicks-Harmon tradition of oral storytelling, Sobol argues that Chase may
have introduced the tale to the Hicks family while Ray was young. Fascinating
discussion of of how the tale reflects Ray Hicks' personal philosophy and
aesthetic, and his identification with the blacksmith who is not a
simplistically wicked folklore character. Hicks' "poetic transformation," told
without laughter, produces "a tragic elegy" in contrast to "the typical jocular
tale" (p. 19). At the end Hicks says associates the Brown Mountain Lights with
the starting place of John's return to earth with fire the devil gives him.

Stadter, Philip
(U of NC, Chapel Hill). "Herodotus and the North Carolina Oral Narrative Tradition."
Histos, vol. 1 (1997). Detailed scholarly article in an electronic
journal of ancient historiography, comparing oral storytelling of Herodotus
and Beech Mountain Hicks-Harmon family. Contains full transcript of "Jack
and the Three Steers" from recording Ray Hicks Telling Four Traditional
"Jack Tales."Comments by John Marincola, includes comparison of Jack with
Odysseus.

"Storyteller
Coming to WPCC." The Focus 4 Oct. 1984: 22. Photo by Tanya Walker shows
Frank Profitt, Jr. chatting with his uncle Ray Hicks. Includes quote by Ruth
Sawyer about storytellers "letting a single stream of light pass through us as
through one facet of the gem or prism that there may be revealed some aspect of
the spirit, some beauty and truth that lies hidden within the world and
humankind." Proffitt was Visiting Artist at Western Piedmont Community College
and Ray Hicks's storytelling is described in anticipation of his visit sponsored
by the Drama Club, on Oct. 15. The article stresses that Hicks takes his time
with telling, as he waits for seasons to change and nature to produce crops and
ginseng roots. His "tales are told 'to ease the heart' of both storyteller and
listeners alike."